Enlightenment Vaporized Out of My Head

The biggest hindrance to being enlightened isn’t obtaining enlightenment itself. As it’s said with making money, the hard part is keeping it. As soon as you leave your chosen enlightenment seminar or retreat back to the “real world”, any spark of enlightenment is vaporized out of you by unavoidable tyrannical bosses (and EVERYONE has a boss), pompous experts, frustrated jerks, and unethical posers.

So the SBAR objectives of this post, the 2nd in the series on the Root of Dukkha, are:

Situation – The hope to be at peace in a world founded upon competition is almost futile. It’s “survival of the fittest” at every level of Life On Earth itself to the human-constructed organization where we earn our income to survive.

Background – The World is in constant change and for Life on Earth to continue, everything living in it must be capable of thriving at any particular point. Such a capability requires a mechanism to adapt to the change. That mechanism, evolution, requires the ability to generate competitors with a mixed array of capabilities, an arena for them to compete, and a force fueling them to fight.

Assessment – The solution can’t be arrived at through normal everyday life thinking. If we could eradicate Pride in ourselves and accept it in others, it will remove the friction of dukkha, which means we can focus on the Now, much more powerfully than if our focus is diluted into the past and future.

Recommendation – See that Pride, the Zeus of the Seven Deadly Sins, is a relic from our low-sentience past that served us well then, but today makes us miserable. Today, it serves as leashes tying us to things others want us to cling to.

Maybe then, instead of taking ten steps forward and nine steps back after each retreat, we can take only one or two steps back.

Prideful are Fearful

Pride is deodorant for fear, simply masking it. Everyone who is prideful is covering fear. And what is fear? Fear is the threat of losing something. Originally, during humanity’s low-sentience past, this pretty much meant our lives to a predator. But more generally, it’s the threat of losing anything we cling to, and in our higher-sentience present, that means quite a few things.

As with envy, there was a time that pride was simply a heuristic that got us through daunting challenges during our simpler-minded days. It’s what gave us the audacity to go up against animals much larger and stronger than us, both to defend ourselves and to kill for food. I wrote of genuine fearlessness in a prior post. Fear is a simple mechanism by which low-sentience creatures engage in “deciding” to escape danger or stand their ground – “flight or fight”.

I say “flight or fight” as opposed the usually ordered “fight or flight” because for humans in society, it’s usually better to just flee the situation first, giving us some time to think through the problem from a distance. A heuristic is just a rule-of-thumb to use if we don’t have time to think through thoughtfully. It’s not an answer across all cases, just a quick and dirty first guess to buy time to make a better guess.

So here is a new heuristic one can follow: Prideful are Fearful.

Pride is the sin to which the other six of the seven deadly sins bow. It’s the antidote to fear, the biggest thing debilitating our human efforts. Just as it’s sometimes easier to douse ourselves with deodorant than to take a bath, it’s easier to mask our fear with pride than to strive for genuine fearlessness by having nothing to fear. Genuine Fearlessness is clinging to nothing, having no buttons to push.

My favorite statement addressing the need to eradicate pride comes from Carlos Castaneda’s character, don Juan. To which pride is referred to as “self-importance”:

“… what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.” – Carlos Castaneda, Fire from Within.

Pride and Power

“I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” – Matthew 19:23-24

Everyone knows this verse from the New Testament expressing the near impossibility for rich people to get into Heaven. We non-rich, non-powerful people then kind of ironically take pride in knowing that in the end we will win.

But I want to make this absolutely clear: This post is by no means a hit piece on the rich and powerful. Looking down on the powerful is as inappropriate as looking down on a homeless person, passive-aggressively pitying them, “Oh those poor rich people …” They play a part that’s as much a part of the world as anything else. This is no different from the role of lions, tigers, and wolves in the ecosystem.

The World is a Yin and Yang of lions and gazelle. Usually, there is some level of imbalance in all things, including the number of lions versus gazelle. That imbalance is restored by nature through the drama of this incredible mechanism called life. In non-duality terms, it’s not just that “there is no me” who is separate from the Universe, but everything else is as much a part of what is.

The powerful – executives, politicians, judges, the rich – naturally require the gall to think that they can lead many independently intelligent people. How could any leader lead if they didn’t have the confidence to think they could? And that confidence comes from pride in their accomplishments – which is the source of their power, and so the thing that their pride protects.

But pride also exists in the schoolyard bully, experts of all sorts, the beautiful people – even the “working man” takes pride in doing “real work”. Pride is in fact the “Me”, the Ego. Remember the new heuristic, Prideful are Fearful. Every single prideful person, rich or not-rich, is scared underneath. And that is no matter how confident and happy they may appear – just about every creature, predator or prey, has a very good level of skill with camouflage.

The key to a dukkha-free life is to stop clinging. By definition, the prideful are clinging in big ways. If one is fortunate enough to be wealthy, whether by inheritance or very hard work with a lot of luck, until they fall they will not have been forced to face the challenge for Enlightenment.

For the prideful, it matters what others think. It’s very hard to change peoples’ minds just as you cannot make a lion stalking you unhungry. It’s the foundation for a very dukkha-filled life. This post is not a matter of changing the world or peoples’ minds. The World is what it is. It’s about eradicating Pride within you and accepting the Pride of others, enabling you to place all your focus on Now. When you become nothing (you lose your Pride) you become everything (you are One with the Universe).

How Does a Snowball Stand a Chance in Hell?

Continuing the Scripture above from Matthew 19:23-24:

… When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” – Matthew 19:25-26

The part, “but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26) means that there is no way to solve the conundrum of being enlightened in a daily world to which we really no longer belong, at least within the context of our normal way of thinking. Enlightenment comes with a completely different set of rules. There is the way of people and the way of the Universe.

All of us have had flashes of enlightenment on vacation or a retreat. When it seems like things can’t get worse and it does – and all you can do is say, “Hey, What the F***.” You are at that moment enlightened, you’ve dropped that big bag of crap you’ve been hoarding and hauling around all these years.

But the problem is vacation ends, and your enlightenment will probably slowly or quickly vaporize out of you. The vast majority of us must make our living in a system where everyone – you, your bosses, your underlings, your customers – are driven to strive in a perpetual escalating cycle of goals. A cycle that seems to have this life of its own, never satisfied, escalating with no other apparent reason but to fulfill someone’s greed – the subject of another post in this series.

This “cycle of obtaining goals” is no more or less “cruel”, unworthy, or senseless than the “circle of Life” where every creature survives by devouring another creature. Life on Earth, the circle of life, only seems sadistic from our little human animal point of view. But from a higher perspective, the beauty of the mechanism is what made Life on Earth virtually immortal – three billion years and still going strong, suffering much greater assaults than what we puny humans can toss at it. Can we say something similar about the “cycle of obtaining goals”?

The Way of the Universe

Pu’u o Mahuka Heiau. That ti plant told me his name is Mr. Ti.

So what do we do when we find peace of mind on vacation at Zion National Park or Tassajara and don’t want to lose it when we get back to work? To be blunt, when it does vaporize so readily, it means we didn’t quite cut all our clinging. There are still leashes that we haven’t cut. We may be “enlightened” in that we know peace is out there, and that in itself is huge. But as Ringo Starr says, “It only takes one line tah reel in a fish.”

Forget the way of people. As crazy as it sounds, drop all ambition at work. Ambitions and goals at work are the clinging, the Dukkha, of the “corporate organism” – Corporate Dukkha. Don’t worry about pleasing your boss, what your co-workers think of you, getting credit, promotions, raises, bonus plans, employee of the month awards. But this does not mean to do poorly at work. On the contrary, in many ways you will work harder – sloth is yet another subject for another post in this series.

It’s all completely senseless. Even if you do more than is expected, chances are someone else has done more and will win the whole pot – sometimes maybe their family life sucks so they have the time to beat you. Some don’t play fair and aren’t ever caught. Even if you’ve figured out some innovative way to get work done faster, the breathing space is immediately filled with more to do. Who is getting richer at their bargain cost of patting you on the head?

If you’re not hungry, not in danger, you’re healthy and can take on whatever the next instant holds. That’s all you need. In fact, beyond people, that’s all any other creature needs. If you are truly honorable, that is, you embrace 100% what is right here, right now, the Universe always provide what you need.

And now again, I want to be perfectly clear:Counter-intuitively, after you’ve checked out of the games, you will actually become a much bigger asset to your employer. Everything you do will be real and not the smoke and mirrors of a bedazzler. Meaning, there is a difference between genuinely effective work and work that has the appearance of effectiveness (lipstick on a pig). They may never know your value, never acknowledge it, but the Enlightened has no appetite for such things anyway.

How will you do this? Giving up all your pride, your self-importance, your ego, you are dukkha-free and that energy is diverted to your engagement with what is. Listen to what they want you to do, and just do it, no resistance. If you think it’s wrong, as a faithful employee, speak once, then forever hold your peace. Is it mind-numbing, soul-sucking work? Hey great! The better to eradicate your energy-draining self-importance.

As I explained in The Compound Interest of Enlightenment, you then apply the saved energy to your Zen Art, which is what you do on the Path of the Enlightened. Notice it is not the path to enlightenment, but the path of the enlightened – those who 100% accept what is, have emptied your cup of all you cling to, and joyfully walk the Path. No thing is as powerful as a Being who is truly One with the Universe.

Absorb everything around you as if your cup is perpetually empty – the Beginner’s Mind. Solve problems without any hoopla or expectation for reward. The worst that will happen is they lay you off because their perception is that you don’t do as much as the bedazzling person. The reality is that if you walk the Path, you are able to find another job very easily. That place that spit you out, bedazzled by the bedazzling, will very soon fall apart without you because they see the flowery illusion, not the reality.

And with all that said, who knows, there is a very good chance your bosses aren’t as bedazzled by the bedazzler as you think. And you may get your bonus, promotion, and all anyway. But you cannot keep that hope in your heart to any degree. This is not a matter of an optimistic or pessimistic outlook on the matter of a goal (getting your bonus or promotion), but faith in the wisdom of being in the Now – God’s will be done.

Yes, we can all have our cake and eat it too, as long as that cake is to be One with the Universe.

The Root of Dukkha – Seven Deadly Sins Series

This post on pride and fear is part of a series looking at Dukkha from the point of view of the seven deadly “sins”.

The Eternal Fishnu and Rubber Ducky Buddha posing with 2 billion years old puddingstone.

Why do we suffer?

Why do we cling to horrible things from our past that should just be left behind like garbage or futures we only imagine? Conversely, we cling to things we hold dear that are pulling away from us or obsessively pursue dreams we are warned to be careful about wishing for because we may just get it.

The big problem is how to solve this conundrum: To abolish suffering we must be 100% accepting of what is. But we live and work in a world where most people live defined by horrible pasts and relentlessly pursue unnecessarily greedy dreams. So if we were to be a shiny jewel of enlightenment, 100% accepting of What Is, we are a snowball in Hell.

Most of us have at some time in our lives stumbled into precious moments or periods where we are in such a state of enlightenment. These are times such as during a long vacation or a retreat such as a Tony Robbins seminar or time at a monastery.

Interestingly though, enlightenment can happen at the height of periods where things seem like it just couldn’t get worse. Then from out of nowhere this sort of magical acceptance, capitulation happens. Counter-intuitively, your mind just gives in to it, as a gazelle may mercifully passes out in the jaws of lions. You get to that nice place beyond mad, where everything doesn’t mean much to you. And then, you get back to life, where slowly, you’re dissolved back into the muck of the world of Dukkha.

The Root of Dukkha

This post begins a series that looks at our suffering-related emotions through the prism of the so-called Seven Deadly Sins, inspired by a quasi evolutionary psychology point of view. Answering the question, “Why do we Suffer?”, is under the umbrella of that discipline because it’s quite universal among people everywhere and of every time.

I say “quasi evolutionary psychology”2 above because I’m not an evolutionary psychologist. I’m a software developer with decades of experience working on decision support systems3. These systems I develop involve a whole lot of moving parts resulting in chaotic systems that are really tough to control – just like real life. The complexity of the world we find ourselves in cannot be eloquently explained without looking down to the simpler underlying mechanisms. So let’s look to the underlying roots of dukkha. And let’s throw in other prisms of Zen, chaos theory, and mimetic theory ending up with something that doesn’t quite look like any of those things.

The “sins” of the Seven Deadly Sins are still within us despite our great intellect because they are deeply rooted in mechanisms that were of immeasurable value to our individual survival during our lower-sentience1 past. These “sins” are not “bad” things about us. They are relics of our old friends that manifest within us in uncomfortable ways as we muddle our way through this ugly stage of our transition to fully awakened beings.

We’ll start this journey by tackling dukkha head-on with the root of dukkha – the deadly “sin” of Envy.

Knowledge from Nothing

Imagine awakening alone in a strange forest where you don’t recognize anything – none of the plants, animals, rocks. There is no one around to tell you what’s edible or poisonous. You’re as helpless as if you were five years old. You’re hungry as hell and wander around these strange woods hoping to stumble across familiar food like apples or the the neighborhood McDonalds. You’re unsuccessful, but you do see a variety of bushes full of fruits, mushrooms, and yummy looking vegetation, none of which you recognize.

You also learned from a ranger-lead tour years ago at Yosemite that there are many yummy looking berries that are very poisonous to people. What do you do? You have one chance to be fatally wrong, no hospital here to pump your stomach. But you eventually spot what appears to be some sort of mammalian animal eating berries from one of those bushes. You reason, “The animal is alive, it’s kind of like me, so those berries are probably edible.”

If someone else is doing something, it’s probably OK. That sounds like a very logical rule of thumb, a heuristic. Most know that we can pretty much eat what mammals such as bears, seals, dogs, and cats eat. But there are exceptions such as eating eucalyptus leaves, the staple of koala bears, or chocolate supposedly being toxic to dogs. Conversely, some things poisonous to other animals are edible for us.

The “math will state” that living by the simple rule of eating something another animal that kind of looks like you eats offers higher odds of surviving to reproduce than playing Russian Roulette with the random variety of unrecognized plants (eating whatever you stumble upon) or starving. Countless other creatures played Russian Roulette for you.

You can benefit from the hard-won information gained by the fortunate ones that survived a particular berry variety by simply copying that creature. No sophisticated thinking is required. You don’t need the intelligence required to add two plus two or reason your odds for winning a round of heads and tails to execute a generalized simple rule: Copy what another creature is doing.

Invention

There are at least two major ways that new methods and machines, innovations, and knowledge come to be by we humans. The first way is that we can invent them purposefully using our intellect – so-called “intelligent design”. This can range from something as mundane as organizing my office to meet the competing requirements of comfort, efficiency, function, and pleasing aesthetics to inventing something epic such as it was with the nuclear bomb in Manhattan Project style.

The second way to innovate is less obvious to us in our daily lives but magnitudes more prevalent. That is copying something you observe. You discover a paradise city, it’s mentioned in a highly respected source such as Forbes as a great place to live, and before you know it everyone else has moved there. For me as a programmer, I can “learn” a new programming language fairly quickly by copying snippets of code without ever formally learning the language – even though I will eventually run into walls.

I need to digress a bit to explain that those examples roughly encapsulate Mimetic Theory. We can make decisions based on copying what respected sources are doing or endorses without having to invest a ton of energy getting into the weeds of the decision. However, as such copying of that good advice goes viral, it leads to a follow-up proposition of Mimetic Theory. That is, the increased demand for those resources leads to annoying shortages, leading to conflict – competition for those limited resources. As a great example of Mimetic Theory, I became interested in it because Peter Thiel is heavily influenced by it.

Back to the two mechanisms of innovation. The two mechanisms aren’t mutually exclusive, meaning we don’t use one or the other. In fact, I think one could argue that just about everything we do in the “intelligent designer” mode is founded upon copying and pasting, mixing and matching, copied components already in our heads that we’ve collected over our lives.

The copying mechanism came first. Why? It is much more likely to eventually spontaneously develop in evolution’s big game of chance than the mechanism of “intelligent designers”. Our human intelligence, along with the knowledge and technology we’ve developed using that intelligence is built upon that mechanism of copying.

Is a monkey smart enough to purposefully invent a solution for cleansing dirty yams, for example, taking it to a stream and rinsing it off? That monkey will associate the yam and motions of dipping the yam into the stream with a better eating experience. It isn’t sitting there pondering its discovery, “Eureka! The kinetic energy of the water in the stream and of my hands dislodges pathogenic particles from the yam that would be detrimental to my teeth, sense of taste, and my gut!”

That lucky monkey will “robotically” continue to practice the rinsing ritual. Unlike us, he cannot then write a book on the subject (a good title: The Stream of Cleanliness) and earn a living for the next year or so on the talk show circuit. Or compose a PowerPoint presentation to the decision-making executives in SBAR fashion:

Situation – We suffer from health problems due to poorly prepared food.

Background – Yams are dug from the ground. They are dirty.

Assessment – The mechanized removal of the undesirable matter will result improved taste and hygienic quality of the yams.

Recommendation – Yams should be transported to a stream where the constant flow of the water and agitation of the undesirable matter by our hands will remove it.

That presentation is well beyond the level of sophistication in the monkey education system. If not for the phenomenon of monkey see, monkey do, that “happy accident” (as Bob Ross would say) will die with that monkey, perhaps not to be re-discovered for millennia: A thousand monkeys eating yams for a thousand years will eventually learn to wash them.

They observe and mimic. Remember, it’s just a heuristic. They really don’t purposefully observe the happy accident and appreciate its value. They just copy it.

On the Shoulders of Consulting Giants

As mentioned earlier, even for we intelligently designing humans, we still primarily copy. Here are a few corporate mantras that refer to copying:

Why reinvent the wheel?

We need Big Data>!!!!

No one was ever fired for hiring IBM.

The last one isn’t necessarily a testimonial to IBM. It means that going with IBM is (was?) such an obvious, almost prudent, choice that no matter how poor the outcome, the executive that approved it couldn’t possibly be faulted. It’s herd mentality. The opposite is Not invented here, which is prideful resistance to copying.

All software developers today copy snippets of code all day long from blogs, github, stackoverflow, posted by the many generous software developers out there. The bulk of the code I write today mostly “plagiarizes” myself out of my toolkit/library of thousands of functions and megabytes of code I’ve written over the years. But most of that code and patterns in my head are in turn learned by copying examples of others.

It’s not cheating (the bloggers usually intend for us to use the examples they provide), or is in any way akin to taking charity (programmers are a prideful lot). It’s prudent. Yes, why reinvent the wheel? I remember back in those pre-Internet 1980s when I pretty much had to re-write practically everything except for the OS and compiler for each customer. Imagine writing my own browser, database engine and providers, analytics graphs, and all!

Metaphor and analogy are a type of copying. Even the overall structure of the analytics systems I develop are based on patterns, “cook books”, decades-old generalized algorithms. It’s all copying.

Envy – The Root of Dukkha

This notion of the simple, primal heuristic of copying is still our predominant mechanism for doing things, updating our skills, ensuring our fitness in civilization. That’s why advertising works. We’re presented with an image and there’s a good chance we’ll want to copy it, even if it is frivolous or even harmful. We really don’t have enough time to diligently think through every question presented to us, nor do we in reality have all the information we need.

It’s important to note that the model of our envy (the person in possession of what we desire) needs to be someone we perceive as successful. In a nutshell, that would often be those who we’ve been conditioned to perceive as glamorous and/or successful people. As children, we would mimic adults. At the very least the fact that they survived to be older implies that they must be doing things right. So even if you give it no thought at all, it’s a good heuristic.

We humans still take consciously and subconsciously take advantage of the countless unwitting experiments that happen in the world every second. Like gene mutations, the vast majority of these experiments are completely benign, no value, no harm. A few will end up harmful, maybe fatal. Even fewer will end up as a happy accident. Of those rare happy accidents, a small percentage will “go viral” – catch the eye of someone else who will copy it, and it will be observed by others, and on and on.

Opportunity Cost

The problem is that with our unimaginably complex society consisting of seven billion people all connected to Kevin Bacon within six degrees, all striving for a piece of limited resources, there is just way too much to copy. It’s not the simple days of long ago in the days of Moses where envy was dominated by “coveting thy neighbor’s wife”4 or literally looking at that “greener pasture” over yonder.

We’re pulled in all directions, constantly bombarded with ads, not just while watching TV, but also during work hours while innocently researching on the Internet. And they are all appealing! Subconsciously, thousands of functions in your brain are screaming, “I do want all of that stuff!”

In today’s Big Data era, it’s interesting to note that Machine Learning models are just copying machines too. The only difference is that the algorithms look for a rule hidden in our data. No one tells it to us, but we copy it anything under the theory that if it worked before it’ll work now. Again, a pretty good rule of thumb.

Jealousy – Envy’s Partner

The thing about envy is that it’s not just about wanting something someone else has. In our sentient, self-aware brain, coupled with our instinct to survive, it’s also about not losing something we already have to someone envying us. That could be loved ones, our life, things we worked so hard to earn, our good reputation, lack of physical pain. Is this what jealousy is? The flip side of envy – protecting what we have as opposed to wanting something someone else has.

Gratitude – The Antidote for Envy

Each of the seven deadly sins is associated with an antidote, a virtue. For envy, that virtue is gratitude. But being thankful for what we have doesn’t really shut up the dukkha of missing out on all those things going on out there. It’s hard to be grateful for what you have when you’ve fallen short of your hopes or when loved ones are ill. The thing is, those thoughts are just in your head.

Every single thing you feel, whether it’s suffering or joy, are all just computations just in your head. Others may concur with you that this or that sucks or is great. But that’s because we’ve all learned from and taught each other these same things. Agreement by others doesn’t make things right. They are still just computations calculated in your three pound brain.

The reality is:

We can’t do or have every single thing we observe. Nor do we want every single thing we see.

We have nothing, and we want nothing. If you don’t understand this, you’ve missed the entire point of Zen. “Want” is the most terrible four-letter word. As Ringo Starr said, “I want nuthin’, not even nuthin’.”

Certainly, all that is going on out there pulling you in every direction isn’t just noise. For every choice we make there are choices we must leave on the table, opportunity costs. So to worry about what we didn’t do is madness since that means we would be in a perpetual state of buyer’s remorse.

Things we envy are of value to someone who for some reason we want to emulate as a model. But that doesn’t mean it’s of more value than what we have. It just means this person is someone your primitive brain considers a worthy model and so there is an instinct to emulate that person.

Cut out that noise. Be here with what is here and now. Yes, other of those countless paths you could be drawn to would lead to something else. But in the end, they are neither worse nor better. All we really want is not to suffer, to not live in a state of dukkha. Love what you have, evolve with it. Nothing is better or worse than anything else.

The Root of Dukkha – Seven Deadly Sins Series

This post on pride and fear is part of a series looking at Dukkha from the point of view of the seven deadly “sins”.

The Photo

The puddingstone in the photo at the top represents all the change over the 4+ billion year old life of Earth. This quartzite puddingstone is metamorphosed (a very slow type of metamorphism similar to the slow smoking of brisket BBQ) sand and jasper stones for over two billion years ago, respectively hardened and re-crystallized over billions of years of activity on Earth.

Notes

1 By lower-sentience, I mean that I think sentience is a continuum, but there is certainly something different about human sentience.2 I attempt to tie Buddhism/Zen to ideas from a wide array of disciplines. In order to stick to the topic (Buddhism/Zen) as much as I can, I cannot get too much in the weeds.3 My reasoning for considering Decision Support Systems as Buddhism is because these systems are directly linked to our thought processes. This is unlike utilitarian software that are more machines like cars than something actually engaged in our decision-making process. I could term these Decision Support systems as analytics, business intelligence, data mining, whatever. Often, the differences in such sets of terms are stretches in order for vendors to differentiate themselves.4 Moses may have noticed perhaps Aaron was taking a fancy to Mrs. Moses, so he made it one of the Top 10 Rules for Godliness.

A principle I try to uphold on this site is that there is no requirement for belief in a supernatural power. No Magic Necessary. By “supernatural”, I mean things not of our “normal” experience readily explained by math and science. For example, answered prayers, Angels, psychic powers, or 5-dimensional beings. I certainly believe in something much bigger than us, something beyond our human comprehension and 100% Good. But I believe intervention from that Source would defeat the purpose of this Life on Earth.

If such Divinity exists, I believe our Universe is a school where we’re on our own to incubate our Sentience. If the supernatural does not exist, at the very least, the teachings of the Eternal Fishnu and Rubber Ducky Buddha of Joliet alleviate our personal suffering while we’re here – even if our sentience is just a fluke of chance in the evolution game.

This blog site is written from the perspective of a computer programmer, not a philosopher or theologian. However, I wish to be clear that this blog site isn’t targeted towards computer programming types. I think most people today are familiar with what computer programs are and what programmers do – much more so than say what physicists do in the realm of quantum mechanics, another non-supernatural point of view from which the study of Buddhism is effective.

For me, computer programming is my Zen art. That is, the activity I’ve chosen as an Earthly/Human metaphor through which I explore deeper meaning. It’s actually a wonderful Zen art, as practical today as sword skills were for the samurai until about 150 years ago. But it’s so much richer for building insight into our minds as software development is about modeling worlds.

Programming is my Zen Art, not this kind of Zen Art. Although this praying mantis is by Rev Dukkha Hanamoku.

I first realized the value of computer programming as a Zen art long ago when I was still in my early 20s. At that time I had about five or six years of experience of programming under my belt, as well as a few systems still in production that I’d developed from scratch.

One day I was called to fix a bug in software I’d written, a practice management system for a medical office. I made sure I understood the problem, gave thought to what could cause the problem, pulled up the source code, found and validated the bug, made a few modifications, and implemented the fixes. The software was “all better”, as a parent might say to a child after fixing up a wound.

I thought jokingly that the software should thank me, but realized it cannot because it has no conception of me, beyond that I have a patient record occupying a few bytes of the disk drive. A child would thank her parent for fixing up her wound, a skill still beyond that child’s capability. That child clearly can see that her parent, another human, does indeed exist. However, although I fixed my software, my creation, I’m incomprehensible to it. But I do exist.

It dawned on me then that analogous to how my software doesn’t need to comprehend me in order for me to fix it, I don’t need to comprehend God for God to be there. Further, I realized that I didn’t wave a magic wand to fix my program. As with fixing most bugs, I went through a relatively mind-taxing process. Our Zen art is our path towards becoming a “god” with a “little g”, a Bodhisattva.

I suppose if I were a better programmer, I would have noticed the flaw at the beginning and it never would have broke. But that’s being very unfair to me and all the other programmers who have had to fix their own bugs. Software for anything tougher than what’s required for a calculator will already have too many moving parts so as to be mindbogglingly complex.

Software developers are like the Samurai in that we’re all much more than just a technician. We’re also artist, poet (really, good code is poetry), philosopher, gardener, and tackle life with a touch of an outlaw spirit.

Hopefully, Life on Earth is the way God develops a new sentience. A sentient being is much more complex than practice management software, so building a sentient being requires a much more elaborate setup. Building sentient beings is a process. And it’s a painful one at that as our rough edges are ground down and our defects stress-tested into the open so they can be fixed.

It can be a painful process if we’re somewhat awake, sentient enough to see the gory details, but not sentient enough to see what’s really going from a higher perspective.

The Rubber Ducky Buddha of Joliet marvels at the result of lots of time and energy.

Freeing ourselves from dukkha saves us energy, no different than how a well-tuned car engine is more energy efficient. We can use that freed energy to fuel us further through the chaotic Yin and Yang dynamics of our daily lives. We can divert that energy from anger, envy, jealously, etc towards improving our ability to flow with the constant change. For example, digging deeper into higher maths enables you to more readily pick up the latest technical breakthroughs or finally dealing with that technical debt of hastily developed software frees you from incessant support calls. You not only are more at peace but you’ve invested it into things that let your energy go further.

Buddhism is a skill. Yes, it is a religion and it is a philosophy, but above all, it’s a skill. It’s the skill the Enlightened practice every instant. Buddhism isn’t something practiced in the classroom or office Monday through Friday, or at church on Sunday. For every instant we’re not practicing Buddhism, we’ve actually practiced un-enlightenment. Think of practicing a sport – for every minute you don’t practice well, you not only lose that time, but you’ve also practiced bad form, paying a double penalty.

Enlightenment is 100% acceptance of what Is right here, right now. Therefore, there is zero-tolerance for accepting only what we deem good and fun, rejecting what we don’t like from what is right around of us. That’s the very definition of not accepting what is right here.

For me separating fun from drudgery means wishing I could just sit at my home office coding all day, just me, my laptop, and my brain. Coding is by far the most enjoyable part of my work. Indeed, it’s what I enjoy doing at whether the corporate office, at home, or even a bit on vacation.

However, to be of value to the Universe – that is, to put up my share of Yin or Yang – the software I produce must be useful in the World, not just useful for my own entertainment. To produce such software of value it must be fully engaged with the world. Therefore, much more than half the energy of developing software is spent gathering requirements, demoing what I’ve done, coordinating with other programmers, fixing bugs in production, taking care of administrative stuff. And that is perfectly fine, after all, we are One with the Universe, which includes the corporation to which I should add value for my paycheck.

Time vs Energy

We’ve all thought many times of improving our situation in life by starting our own business with our own ideas or getting an advanced degree that opens doors. But we tell ourselves we don’t have the time. If we think about it, we actually do have the time because we still find time to watch TV, golf, or indulge some other sort of entertaining thing. But it’s critical to remember that our brains are physical things. They do run out of fuel, require refueling and other maintenance, and they do malfunction. Saving time by not letting our brains rejuvenate is counterproductive.

It’s more so that we don’t have energy. We all push back on requests shoveled on us by blaming a lack of time: “I don’t have the time!” No one can argue the physical constraints of time. But if we said, “I don’t have the energy”, they think us lazy.

Enlightenment is freedom from the energy drain of dukkha, the wasted energy from a vehicle on a wobbly wheel. Freed from things we cannot change from the past and running from futures that will probably not happen, we have more energy to focus on now, the only place that actually exists. Our enlightened recognition that change is constant and all things are temporary means we spend energy honing our Enlightened skills for the moment opportunity knocks, rather than spending that energy forcing the issue.

Focusing that energy on now, pays double dividends as we’re not spending that energy whining, alienating people, or otherwise shooting ourselves in the foot. Instead we use that energy in a virtuous cycle, fixing the wobbly wheels so we better blend in, align with the Universe. Like the samurai perpetually striving towards perfection, we don’t know when our moment of opportunity will come, but we will be ready when it does.

Life is the Dojo

Be mindful of what you’re doing. Neither drink the Kool Aid at the corporate rah-rah meetings nor fight what Is. Joyfully practice your kata and embrace the randori, as the randori is the only true validation of your practice. Empty your cup and embrace the madness, thankful for those others on their own paths, who will be your worthy uke and to which you will gladly return the favor.

I very much want to avoid a supernatural dependency on what I’m conveying. But time and time again, the Universe seems to be extremely wise in presenting me with opportunities only when I’m genuinely ready, not when I think I’m ready. However, opportunities are always right in front of you. You just need to see it as they are more often than not nothing like what you’re hoping for.

Last Fall, the Rubber Ducky Buddha of Joliet and I were hiking around Canyonlands. “Is this catcus hiding under this ledge with its weapons deployed fearful?”, asked Rubber Ducky.

I thought about it for a few minutes. With Rubber Ducky, strange questions never have an obvious answer, so you need to deeply ponder his questions. If I blurted out my instinctual answer, I would have answered “Yes”, been wrong, and that would have been the end of the lesson. As Ringo Starr says, “Why plahnt seeds where it cahn’t grow.”

So I prepared the garden of my mind for this lesson. Hmmm … OK … the cactus under the ledge redminded me of “preppers”, tucked away in the mountains living in fortresses they call home, lots of guns and ammo, lots of food. They’re obviously afraid of something. That similarity is probably why I would have blurted out “yes” without pondering the question further.

But the cactus can’t make decisions like the preppers. The cactus are what they are and the preppers are humans with the power of design and choice. What would the nature of a plant living in a dry, hot desert among thirsty, hungry critters be? Well … it would be like the catcus tucked away under the ledge with its thorns. That’s just one solution to that question. Another solution would be to live in an air-conditioned home of a human who thought you were nice thing to have.

I asked Rubber Ducky if this lesson is about eliminating fear, to which he answered with the question, “Why would we want to do that?”

Me: Because fear is debilitating. You go off and hide.

RD: Is that it? Are rock climbers, MMA fighters, and skydivers fearless?

Me: Maybe they are fearless … or better yet, they’re brave enough to face their fears. You can’t deny their courage, whether they actually have something to fear or not.

Rubber Ducky deciding to save us a bunch of time: Here’s the punchline to this lesson: No creature on Earth is fearless. That is, no ant, no dog, no human. It doesn’t make sense to be fearless. Without fear, Life on Earth would fall apart. What if predator and prey did just give up?

Me: I know this one! Predators wouldn’t be able to drive prey to do better and prey wouldn’t be able to drive their predators to do better. They push each other to be better!

RD: Yyyyyes … but what else? So they stop evolving … so … bigger picture … Earth would continue along its merry way over time, orbits changing, axis tilting, continents moving, volcanoes erupting, meteors striking … What would become of Life on Earth, the three billion years old creature in which we’re each like just a cell?

Me minutes later: The Earth continues evolving! But Life on Earth would be like a hermit clinging to his old ways as society around him changes, grows, impinging more and more on his solitude, eventually snuffing him out!

RD: The mechanics involved in this thing you think of as fear is actually fundamental to Zen. It’s the basis of the decision-making process of all creatures. For humans, it is a blown up decision-making mechanism.

Simple Answers to Simple Questions

The Eternal Fishnu later taught me that this fear thing started as simple heuristics – simple, quick and dirty, good enough rules. It’s a mechanism that can possibly spontaneously emerge within in a few short billion years. That is, as opposed to human-designed machines that would take way longer to pop up in that way.

Let’s go way back a billion or so years ago to much simpler times, when only single-celled creatures roamed the Earth, and see that the fear thing began as just a binary (Yes or No) rule at a decision point to choose left or right. For example, “sense” more food to the left then move to the left, to the right then move to the right.

For creatures a little smarter, sense a predator to the left then move left, sense a predator to the right then move right.

For even smarter creatures, left or right upgraded into fight or flight. Can I take that bastard? For these creatures that mostly translates to: Is that bastard bigger than me? Yes, then fight. No, then run like hell.

For such non-sentient or low-sentient creatures, such as ants and fish, if they were wrong, they didn’t care because the aren’t aware of their own mortality. All that matters in that some percentage of them live to reproduce so the species – not that individual – survives. Remember, the reality of Life on Earth is that it’s a competition of species, not individuals. It just seems that way to we sentient humans because in a way we each are a species of one.

Complex Answers to Complex Questions

For the not-quite-as-sentient-as-humans-today creatures (such as dogs, apes, or even humans in much simpler times) this decision-making mechanism became much more sophisticated. The increased complexity of life has grown the list of choices to more than a binary decision of fight or flight and the factors to consider that are plugged into our decisions have grown way beyond whether something is bigger or smaller than you.

For these creatures, a new heuristic had to emerge, much more powerful but still rather simple. And that heuristic is: If someone else is doing it, chances are that it’s good. What’s great about this heuristic is that it doesn’t require great intelligence to purposefully come up with better ideas. One lucky individual could simply accidentally stumble upon something that works – and many of the greatest “inventions” are accidental, then it spreads like the plague, only it’s just an idea, not a virus/bacteria. See Mimetic Theory (Mimesis) to dive deeper into this very intriguing notion.

Today, with seven billion people in the world, instant communication, global-scale commerce, “fast-food technology” (everything providing instant gratification), way enough food, there are just too many things for us to copy. How many really neat things are going on out there? So many things to catch our attention because they seem fun, or things we should be doing, or things we should be avoiding. We sentient humans are plagued with desires, all because of this web of competing fears of missing out on multiple things because we have just one body. Our new heuristic has reached its limit, unless we like being pulled in every direction and constantly tortured about what we should be doing. That’s Dukkha to a degree not existent in the Buddha’s time when he thought that was bad!

Genuine Fearlessness

So that’s the rough story of Fear and Dukkha, give or take a few liberties with the facts. For humans today, it’s a relentlessly churning world out there where hiding under a rock ledge with our weapons pointing out isn’t a plausible long-term option. It’s a fine option for the cactus in the photo above because it has no goals, it has no desire to be anything other than what it is and doesn’t know to care about how its life will play out. It just does what it does in real-time response to what is presented.

So what’s the answer? The only genuinely fearless critters are the truly Enlightened. The Enlightened have no fear because they have no goals, yet they play their part – just like the cactus in the photo above. The only real difference between a human and the cactus is that we get to make choices about the part we play, even though we don’t have much say about the script. The cactus can only be a perfect cactus, nothing else. They are 100% accepting of what is now because there is only now, the past and future are just ideas in our heads.

Becoming bigger is the way the unenlightened (that is, almost everyone) tries to deal with fear; richer, bigger, more powerful, more beautiful, more muscular, more talented, bigger car, bigger gun, more whatever than the next guy. It’s just a manifestation of that primal heuristic that is still in us – bigger is stronger. By hoarding these qualities, we believe we’re fortifying our hold on what we cling to, but it’s all just deodorant masking our fear.

You begin by emptying your cup – empty your mind of all that you know. Replace your “NO FEAR” bumper sticker with “no pride” … hahaha. Start with a 7-Day Bodhi Day Season.

In annoyingly paradoxical Buddhist style I will now talk about how Everything Forms Every Thing, even though I just got through talking about how No Thing Exists. How can there be things that form when no things exist?

No Thing Exists is a statement about the true nature of the Universe. Everything Forms Every Thing states the same thing, but from the point of view of we symbolically thinking creatures. And therein lies the paradox. Let’s explore this paradox by first revisiting the statement of No Thing Exists then followed by our gift of sentience.

On one side of the coin, the Universe is a Mega Process churning away on its own, not much different from how on a smaller scale our bodily animal functions churn away. Our heart beats, blood rushes around, cells give and take things to the blood, food is metabolized, bad stuff and waste is gathered and expelled. Aside from our brain and breathing (to a limited extent), there are no organs in us that wistfully long for a time in the past or aspire to or fear some special future. It just does what it does – no questions asked, no whining, no procrastination, no fear. Which is why our conscious mind really has no control over those processes. If our conscious mind could control all of that, it would make a mess out of things.

There are no inherent things in the Universal Process. Whatever seems like a thing is just a snapshot taken in our heads, like a photo encoded in a JPG file on our laptops. Whatever things we think we recognize are no more real than what we see in our photos, a temporary phenomenon, ethereal ghosts, caught at an instant of the constant churning.

What can trick us into thinking that there are indeed consistent things is that things change at different rates, some so slow our brains don’t notice, like rocks. Some in an unimaginable instant such as an explosion and the aftermath. Even as you may sit in front of me talking, your mind doesn’t think of me as changing, but my blood is in different places, I learned something I didn’t know a second ago, probably forgot something, both which alters my immediate motivations.

However, there is a level of order even in the constantly churning process of the Universe. Although change is constant, so are the underlying laws of physics constant, at least in the realm in which our human bodies are manifested.

On the other side of the coin, we are symbolically thinking, sentient creatures. We’re able to manipulate the world around us. Over our lives we observe things, building a vast library of tactics in our heads. With that vast library, we slice and dice those things into simpler pieces, and construct from those pieces some image we desire, and proceed to manifest that image in the real world.

In order to manifest those images only in our heads, we need to move things around. Manifesting those images we construct in our heads is done in steps, a process. To grow crops, we must gather seeds, fashion tools, prepare the soil, plant the seeds, care for the plants (water, fertilize, protect from weeds and pests), and harvest the plants. Each of those steps are in themselves a hierarchy of sub-processes. However, until we actually accomplish those goals, it’s just a theory in our head because the Universe churns away and whatever happens is what happens.

How did we humans break out of the Oneness with the Universe becoming these symbolically thinking, sentient, designing creatures? No human really knows for sure, although there are many very plausible theories in the fields of Artificial Intelligence (close to what I do for a “living”), archaeology, neuroscience, sociology, evolutionary psychology, mimetic theory, etc.

But The Eternal Fishnu constantly reminds me that sentience is a continuum and that our sentience is just our human brand. Meaning all creatures of Earth are sentient to some extent, mice more than cockroaches, dogs more than mice, chimps more than dogs, and us more than chimps. Additionally, Fishnu reminds me that there are many kinds of sentience for which we are not aware or at least choose to ignore. For example, Life of Earth is sentient in a different way.

What we can state from a Buddhist and Zen perspective is that the great gift of the ability to design and manifest our designs is also the great curse for the unenlightened. These symbols, the things we know of which exists only in our heads, are things in the past which no longer exists. And our desire to manifest our designs based on these things break our hearts when they either don’t work and begin disintegrating even as we’re still building it. There is nothing we build that lasts without our becoming a slave to it. In other words, we cling to a past that doesn’t exist and we strive for a future based on designs dependent upon a Universe that has no notion of cooperation. This is dukkha, the side-effect of our great gift which the Buddha has taught us to smooth out.

For we sentient beings the phrase Everything Forms Every Thing is the enlightenment that the Universe is One big process. Saying it “backward” makes sense too: Every Thing is dependent upon everything. Our sentience is based on the pitifully inadequate model of the Universe in our heads. We try to impose our desire (our will) in the Universe with varying success but our plans are based on future conditions we cannot possibly predict. Even a tiny thing we fail to consider will grow over the time it takes us to execute our process to manifest our vision.

Dukkha is that gap between what we want and what the Universe just does anyway. So is the answer to our suffering, our dukkha, to shut off our ability to design and manifest those designs? Are you crazy? This is our great gift!

Sure, simply letting go of all our desires would make us One with the Universe. But that’s not our nature, it’s our schtick, no less than an eagle is a perfect eagle. We have a duty to exercise our ability to design and manifest those designs. That is our schtick, our way to contribute our Yin to Yang, or the other way around. It’s no different from the array of schticks of among all other creatures. If any species in an ecosystem just gives up, it’s all thrown into a tailspin.

100% Acceptance of What Is – We don’t cling to a past that no longer exists, run or hide from a future that probably won’t come, or even enslave ourselves to “dreams” which are nothing but arbitrary things we see someone else has. We 100% accept what is in front of us, right here, right now, and that’s where we focus our attention.

Continue on the Path – We recognize that the Universe is constantly in motion, even when it may not seem like it, whether we like it or not. There is no destination on this path. The Path of Enlightenment means that as the Universe moves in time, we move along with our attention here, not back there, nor way up there.

Think of the sand mandalas of the Tibetan Buddhists – so intricate, so much human effort to build something of such beauty, so delicate. But instead of attempting to preserve something so incredibly beautiful and delicate with Herculean effort, they let go of it. It freely returns to the chaos from which it came. We simply enjoy it, no remorse, no guilt. We appreciate that thanks to our sentient design and manifest capability, we didn’t need to wait the vigintillion years it probably would take before clumps of sand spontaneously to fall in that pattern.

In yesterday’s post, See, I discussed the phrases “Nothing exists” versus “No thing exists”. Let’s recap that discussion from another point of view because this is a fundamental Buddhist/Zen topic.

Think of having heard a Buddhist priest saying, “Everything is an illusion. Nothing exists.” Does the priest mean there are no stars, no Earth, no chair I’m sitting in as I type, no laptop, no Cable One providing my Internet connection, not even me? That’s what I thought the first thousand or so times I heard something like that.

Why would it be said that everything is an illusion, nothing exists? Well, it’s pretty much what the Heart Sutra is about, particularly the line, “Form is emptiness and Emptiness is form”. The Heart Sutra succinctly captures Buddhism – thus “Heart” as in “heart of the matter”, not the organ or Valentine’s Day heart.

But things do exist. When I leave for work in a couple of hours, I need to deal with the traffic on real roads, real traffic lights, real other cars with drivers, and everything else that prevents me from just driving in a straight line to work.

You’re probably thinking, “What a load of crap!” Things are there, but yet that is something Buddhist priests do say. So are they insane, high, scamming us, having fun at our expense … perhaps it’s wishful thinking on their part, as if reciting a mantra, “If I say this enough, I’ll actually believe it”. Perhaps some of them … hahaha. Things obviously exist, so out of the priests who aren’t insane, high, or whatever, they must mean something else, something completely different from our Western frame of mind.

Here’s my real-life version of an old Zen story: The hike to Observation Point (the scene in the photo above) is magical. The heights, the views of Angel’s Landing, the very real dangers, the wildlife, the constant change of it all, the untamable erosion. I said to Rubber Ducky, “I feel the Oneness with this place, nothing matters, things will be what they’ll be, there is no pain.” As I looked around in awe and contentment, my toe kicked a rock in the middle of the trail. I hear Rubber Ducky laughing his ass off – Mack Mack Mack Mack Mack Mack …

The Buddhist monk isn’t saying the Universe is empty but that whatever our brain thinks of, whether my car, Mrs. Hanamoku, or the leftovers from yesterday’s Independence Day celebration, are just snapshots of something I encountered in the past. Like JPG photo files on my iPhone or my laptop, they are just snapshots of scenes from the past, specifically the whatever the “Date Created” says.

These files are encoded on my iPhone and laptop, such as the photo at the top of this post, in no way resemble what is displayed, and even less what was actually there. It doesn’t capture what is behind the things you see in the photo, how things are moving, the sounds, the “Fall-ness” of the time I was there – the cool temperature of the air, the smells. It doesn’t capture that I’m standing very close to the edge of a 2000 foot drop, nor does it capture the spirit of awe I share with the few others there.

Such photos are pitifully inadequate models of what we are seeing. Likewise, my brain holds encoded snapshots of things I recognize that are just encodings in my brain. To be certain, our brain encodings are in most ways magnitudes more sophisticated than the encodings of a JPG file. But still, they are pitifully inadequate models of the what is really there now.

This beautiful scene rendered in the photo above no longer exists. You may be thinking that if you were to go there this coming late October, you could take a photo “exactly” like this. It may even be difficult to differentiate our photos side by side. But by this coming October, tons of the canyon will have eroded away, the trees will be different (although imperceptibly because of the distance), the drama of the wildlife will have a different cast. It may be so crowded there that it could actually be a bit unenjoyable. Do our two photos really represent the same thing?

Everything is an illusion. Nothing exists. Every single thing we think of is just a ghost living only in our brain. The only thing that exists outside of our brain is what is right here, right now. What do you do with this insight? Don’t be the guy who “knows everything”! You know nothing! Do you now know what that means? Empty your cup! Take off your “black belt”, tie on that old “white belt” you haven’t seen for decades, and ironically sew the knot on permanently.